


Gifts From Earth

by cofax



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The human has a new project.</i> Snippet-fic for Anna, set in season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifts From Earth

The human has a new project. Sikozu finds him in the galley, humming as he shakes a covered pan over the stove. There's a pungent smell in the air, familiar, although she cannot place it.

Sikozu watches Crichton lift the lid of the pot, sniff, and stir the contents. He drops the lid back on with a flair and an uncomplicated grin. She's rarely seen him this way, she realizes: simply cheerful, without the usual taint of suspicion or despair.

"Does the old woman know you're burning her sauce pan?"

She doesn't startle him: he smirks as he removes a mortar and pestle from one of the cabinets. "Nah, Granny's off with Rygel on a shopping expedition. By the time she gets back I'll be long gone."

Sikozu nods and steps closer to the stove. The smell... she can almost identify it. Crichton was there, and all of Moya's crew, and -- she sighs. It's gone now.

She hates asking, but she hates not knowing more. "What are you doing?"

"Got a big project, so I'm making a pot of java to keep me going."

"Java?" The word is unfamiliar.

"Coffee, Sputnik. Didn't you taste any on Earth? I got twenty pounds of beans and I'm learning how to roast 'em myself."

Coffee. She remembers now, the hot dark liquid Crichton drank at every opportunity, combined with the mammary fluid from human livestock. She twitches in recollection. She didn't like Earth: it was loud, naive, hypocritical -- terrifying.

"Noranti has chemicals which are far more effective at increasing the pulse-rate and synaptic connections--"

He rolls his eyes and she subsides: efficiency, she has learned, is not particularly important to humans. "Why do you do this, then?"

Crichton shrugs, scoops a handful of dark pods from the pan into the mortar, and begins grinding. The smell becomes even more pungent; Sikozu finds herself intrigued despite herself. She is not hungry: it is only twelve days since her last meal. But the odor is complex and appealing, bitter and warm.

She steps closer and leans over the bowl. Crichton is crushing the beans into small particles, dark as the soil of her uncle's fields.

Every year during the DorNatha festival Sikozu's mother prepares ki-insta porridge from whole grains. It takes days of soaking, followed by mashing in the aged wooden barrel, to make the grain soft enough to eat with spoonfuls of lindon preserves. Sikozu Shanu left to attend the Institute too young to be taught how to prepare the porridge, and thus she has none of that information in her memories.

She and Crichton are both in exile, neither likely ever to return to their places of origin, although there the similarity ends. He will always have a place among his own kind, whereas her bioloid status denies her any more than a recognition of her service. She has no family to take her in.

Sikozu lets her eyes drift shut and inhales deeply, filling her lungs with the smell of someone's home. "Will you have enough to share?"


End file.
